CMC and the Question of Democratisation: A University Field Study

The potential of Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) to enable new forms of social interaction and foster democratisation of decision making has raised much interest but has been challenged by contradictory research results. Conceived as a tool, CMC was examined in terms of its social effects thus indicating a degree of technological determinism. In this paper, we explore CMC as an extension of a productive social space of linguistically-mediated interaction, drawing on Habermas’s theory of communicative action. By examining the evidence from a field study of a university, we identify how participants appropriate CMC to produce a consultative discourse motivated by divergent agendas. This investigation helps us better understand communicative practice and concurrent tendencies of CMC towards encouraging and obstructing